On a personal, biographical level, this book comes out of my interest as a youngster in watching sports on television. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen I was a TV baseball addict, avidly devouring statistics past and present—batting averages, pitching records, numbers of home runs, etc. Being a good softball player, and being more knowledgeable about baseball than the boys and my father and his friends, caused much confusion, with my parents worrying over the “masculine” direction that their daughter’s life was taking. At that time I was a Yankee fan and lived in northern New Jersey, not so far from Yankee Stadium. But in an effort to save me from my tomboy tendencies, my father refused for years to take me to the ballpark. This, of course, was quite devastating to me, and certainly no cure for my video-sports habit, which was somehow begrudgingly allowed. Years later my father apologized for this, considering it one of his greatest paternal errors. In a way, this book may begin to turn that error around.